Hard to reach communities and a hard to reach university
Date
2017Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
We propose a methodology capturing the perception of geographical, monetary and transportation distance between secondary state schools in some Scottish remote communities and a hard to reach university located in a small town on the north-east coast of rural Fife, i.e. the University of St Andrews. The location of St Andrews and the absence of a railway station mean that it is often interpreted as being geographically isolated. As a result, the University of St Andrews is frequently perceived as hard to reach. We show that by combining representations in terms of mileage, journey duration and fare we can create an index that reflects the difficulty of geographical access to the University of St Andrews from these Scottish communities. This index is not dependent on the local authority in which the institutions are located, nor on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation associated with each institution data zone, nor on the percentage rate of progression to higher education from these secondary schools. It is dependent on how distance may be perceived in terms of geographical access, monetary costs, and transportation. This index represents an alternative way of measuring remoteness. It could be easily (1) extended to many higher education institutions and (2) integrated into a contextualised admissions system in which applicants from Scottish remote communities would be signalled.
Citation
Lasselle , L & Macpherson , R A 2017 , ' Hard to reach communities and a hard to reach university ' , Journal of Academic Perspectives , vol. 17 , no. 1 .
Publication
Journal of Academic Perspectives
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2328-8264Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2016, Journal of Academic Perspectives. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work will be available at http://www.journalofacademicperspectives.com/
Collections
Items in the St Andrews Research Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.